Male, age 16, Jersey Miller stepped out into Anchorage's Abbott Loop neighborhood on the afternoon of November 15, 2022, after messages indicated he planned to meet over “puff bars,” nicotine vape products sometimes sold informally. Moments later, a 911 call came in at 2:46 p.m., and officers found the 16-year-old lying outside on the 7300 block of Cantonment Court with a single gunshot wound to the head.
Police initially described the victim as an adult, then corrected the record the next morning to reflect he was a juvenile; his name was withheld at first because of his age, but became public through subsequent court filings and coverage. A makeshift memorial soon rose on the quiet cul-de-sac—candles, flowers, a basketball—marking where the boy had fallen.
Detectives pieced the story together from neighborhood surveillance cameras, traffic footage, witness interviews, and the phones of teenagers who had been circling the area in a sedan. Charging documents say three boys arrived in the car to sell “puff bars” and intended to take Miller's money without handing over any product. After a brief exchange at the car window, the driver looped around the dead end and accelerated back past the 16-year-old. From the rear driver's-side window, a single shot rang out. Investigators later seized a Glock 10mm handgun and matching ammunition, and they say no weapon was recovered on or near the 16-year-old.
Anchorage police detained three juvenile suspects within hours and, by the next day, said they were not seeking additional suspects. Ultimately, 17-year-old Sakariya Abdulkadir Musa was charged as an adult with two counts of second-degree murder and one count of robbery. According to prosecutors, he first denied involvement beyond being in the car, then admitted firing from the back seat, claiming he believed the 16-year-old was reaching for a gun and that he had intended only to fire a warning shot; investigators noted he also admitted he never actually saw a gun. A judge set his bail at $250,000. The two other teens were remanded to the McLaughlin Youth Center, with their cases referred to the Division of Juvenile Justice.
What began as a small midafternoon meeting over vape cartridges ended as a homicide that rippled through a neighborhood and a city, leaving a family to grieve a 16-year-old male whose life ended on a cold street and prompting a flurry of arrests and charges that moved one suspect into adult court while the other two remained in juvenile proceedings. The official investigation record fixated on minutes of movement—the looping car, the turn at the cul-de-sac, the grainy path of a sedan on traffic cameras—and on the artifacts left behind: a phone on FaceTime, a box for a gun, and a roadside memorial that grew as the days passed.
